6.1 Discussion

The final series of stops in Devanāgarī is the bilabial series (द्वयोष्ठ्य dvayoṣṭhya), pronounced with both lips together. Speakers of most varieties of English have all of these sounds already but one, the voiced aspirate भ (although they may hear p and ph as the same sound).

This section also introduces the concept of nasalization . In Devanāgarī and many related scripts the symbol anusvār , which is simply a small dot that sits at the top of the vertical line of a consonant, is used to represent a nasalized (नासिक्य nāsikya) sound attaching to the following consonant. Think of it as a way of writing a half nasal (more on combining consonants in Part 10). This anusvār doesn’t refer to one specific letter, rather to whatever nasal consonant is closest to (i.e., from the same series) as the following consonant. The following examples demonstrate this.

In addition to nasal consonants, Hindi also has nasal vowels, meaning that the soft palate (velum) is lowered to allow air to escape through the nose rather than just the mouth. Those who have studied languages such as French may recognize such sounds from the pronunciation of words like bon or avant. In English, vowels are sometimes nasalized before a nasal consonant, but this isn’t a meaningful sound change. However, in Hindi and other South Asian languages, it changes the meaning of a word and is an important feature in many grammatical structures, for instance in some plural endings. A nasal vowel is indicated by the addition of the symbol candrabindu ঁ, or “moon dot,” above it, as in the following examples, which you can click to hear. Note that in transliteration nasalization of a vowel is indicated by the symbol m̐.

If the vowel mātrā doesn’t leave room however, the moon part of candrabindu may be omitted, leaving only the bindu (which looks identical to anusvār). However, it is generally clear from context that this indicates a nasalized vowel, for instance at the end of words. Here are some examples, (click to hear):